Prosecutors have not publically discussed motive, but documents released by police have revealed two points they are investigating further. According to the documents, Hernandez's fiancé Shayanna Jenkins told them she suspected Lloyd was a marijuana dealer. Police said a scale of the kind that could have been used to weigh drugs was recovered in Hernandez's house, court documents showed.

But Lloyd's coach was adamant that Lloyd had nothing to do with drugs.

"He wasn't a drug dealer," Branch said. "[If] you [are] a drug dealer, you ain't riding a bike to practice, you know?"

Before the Patriots drafted Hernandez in 2010, the former tight end addressed questions about his alleged drug use in a letter to the NFL organization, in which he volunteered to "submit to a bi-weekly drug test throughout my rookie season," and he offered to give "any guaranteed portion of my 2010 compensation to these drug tests and reimburse the team a pro-rata amount for any failed drug test."

"I know Lloyd well. He's not a gang-banger. He is petrified of guns himself," he said. "Saying he was trying to extort or, extort Mr. Hernandez with information… he would never do that. He would never do that, try to extort money. That's not Odin. He would never do that. So that's all a misconception, that's not the Odin I know."

In the coming weeks, as the investigation into Lloyd's death continues and Hernandez's case heads to trial, more will likely be revealed about how these two men were connected and whether one may have tried to pull the other into the rough world they had both spent their young lives trying to escape.